T

JOHN STUART MILL

(1806-1873)

BY RICHARD T. ELY

HE life of John Stuart Mill is in several particulars one of the most remarkable of which we have any record; and it can scarcely be an exaggeration to call his Autobiography — in which we find presented in simple, straightforward style the main features of his life. a wonderful book. Heredity, environment, and education are the principal forces working upon our original powers and making us what we become. It may be said that John Stuart Mill was favored with respect to each one of these three forces. His father was a philosopher and historian of merit and repute. His environment naturally brought him into close relations with the most distinguished men of his day, even in early youth; and his education, conducted by his father, was an experiment both unique and marvelous.

John Stuart Mill was born in London, May 20th, 1806. His father, James Mill, was a Scotchman, who four years before the birth of his son John Stuart had moved to London. When his son was thirteen years old, James Mill received an appointment at the India House, in which he finally rose to the remunerative position of Head Examiner. John Stuart Mill had just begun his eighteenth year, when on May 21st, 1823, he entered the India House as junior clerk; where he remained, rising also to the position of Head Examiner, until the extinction of the East India Company and the transfer of India to the Crown, in 1858. Both of the Mills were thus associated with India in their practical activities, and one of James Mill's principal works was a History of British India.' Two other works by the father must be mentioned, because they both exercised important influence upon the intellectual development and the opinions of the son; viz., the 'Elements of Political Economy' and the Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind.'

James Mill decided what he wished his son to become, and began to train him for his destined career almost from infancy. In his Autobiography, John Stuart Mill says that he cannot remember the time when he began the study of Greek, but he was told that it was when he was three years of age. He could only faintly remember

reading Æsop's Fables, his first Greek book. When he was eight, among other authors he had read the whole of Herodotus, the 'Cyropædia' and 'Memorabilia' of Xenophon, and six Dialogues of Plato. At the age of eight he began the study of Latin, and had read more than most college students have in their college course when he was twelve years old. Besides this he had read a marvelous amount of history. It was at the age of thirteen that he began a complete course in political economy under his father's instruction. James Mill lectured to his son during their daily walks; and then the son wrote out an account of the lectures, which was read to his father and criticized by him. The lad was compelled to rewrite again and again his notes until they were satisfactory. These notes were used in the preparation of James Mill's Elements of Political Economy'; a work which was intended to present, in the form of a school-book, the principles of his friend Ricardo. Ricardo's writings and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations' were carefully studied under the father's tuition. The son was questioned, and difficulties were not explained until he had done his best to solve them himself.

An important event in Mill's education was a year spent in France, in the house of Sir Samuel Bentham, a brother of the English philosopher and jurist Jeremy Bentham, who was a friend both of father and son. While in France he acquired the French language, and gained an interest in French affairs which he never lost. He also enjoyed the beautiful mountain scenery which he visited while on the Continent. While in Paris, on his way to Sir Samuel Bentham's, he spent nine days in the house of the French political economist Jean Baptiste Say, a distinguished French disciple of Adam Smith. Mill returned to England in 1821, at the age of fifteen, and then began the study of Roman and English law. He began his writing for the press at the age of sixteen; and the day after he was seventeen, as we have seen, he entered upon a service of nearly forty years in the India House.

There has been considerable controversy about the value of the education which he received in his early years, and also about the disadvantages which attended his father's methods of instruction. John Stuart Mill himself states, and with apparent regret, that he had no real boyhood. But he does feel that otherwise his education was a success, and gave him an advantage of starting a quarter of a century ahead of his contemporaries. The following words are found in his Autobiography:

"In the course of the instruction which I have partially retraced, the point most superficially apparent is the great effort to give, during the years of childhood, an amount of knowledge in what are considered the higher branches of education, which is seldom acquired (if acquired at all) until the age of